Just a little project

I haven't had time for my daily dose of 15 minutes of playing lately, so I decided to make some scrap yardage for a small wall hanging.  I always like candles for Christmas, so I decided to make one.  I have several children's coloring books and I pulled a couple pages for inspiration...

Look at the yellowed edges of those pages!  I've had these coloring books for 5-10 years.

I like the candle on the right, simply because it has fewer leaves, although I can make as many or few as I like.  Also I like the small holly berries on that one.  

I'm going to applique it to a background of 6" blocks created from white scrap yardage; here it's just fused down without stitching...

looks nice already, doesn't it?

I'm thinking of putting a very narrow (1-1/2") inner border around it, maybe in green, then add a wider white border from scrap yardage.  If I applique some fussy-cut holly and leaves along the outer border, I should have it ready for quilting before the weekend. 

tiny scraps

See where tiny tiny scraps can lead you?

I just loved these little pieces and had some fun

sewing them all together.

A little bit of quilting....

A little bit of binding....

and now....

I can enjoy it every day.

fun.

Some stripes and dots for Victoria!

Fun. fun!!!

And some blocks for Margaret!

I'm supposed to request blocks next month...

Oooooh! Nooooo!

What am I going to request???

Any ideas??

blocks for Sujata

I'm sending these off to Sujata...

wishing....

it were my quilt!!! :/

I should cheer up and make one, huh?

Yeah....

This is going to be

ONE.

FUN.

QUILT!!!!

spring

I don't know why...

but these are the colors I've been playing with.

Am I tired of the cold??? Maybe.

Am I dreaming of spring??? Maybe.

Do I like pink and green??? Maybe.

When that warm weather comes...

I'll be ready!!!

blue

My blue scrap drawer was bursting at the seams!

So I opened it up and began to sew strips.
The phone book pages made a great foundation!!!
First I had to trim them square.

I think I'll be using this technique next month when
I host a sewing day at church.
We'll be making quilts for the
kids graduating from high school.

True confession:
I spent more than 15 minutes...
but I didn't have to think at all!!!
That's a blessing!!!
I will say the blue scrap drawer seems to have exploded!!!
Looks to me like there's more here than when I
BEGAN!!!!

some more 15 minutes

I've been trying to find my 15 minutes at least a couple of times a week. Here's my latest wonky log cabin grab-the-next-fabric scrapy quilt blocks.

I tried one with just bold solids, one mono cromatic, one all browns and one totally random. Looking at them here, that one could do with some more added to it.

The bottom right is all from scraps given to me by a lady on a thrifty sewing forum. They don't really go too well together but I thought it would be nice to have a 'Sarah' block in this quilt. I might try this with other bits of fabric, so I'll have a 'mum' block, an 'Emma' block ect...

blocks for Glen

Cool and Warm.

Diagonal lines.

Cool and Warm.
Straight lines.

Curious.....
What's this quilt going to be???
What is Glen going to do with all these
mismatched blocks???
Different sizes....
Different colors....
She's probably a magician. ;)

and a miracle occurred

This is done...no name as yet. I still have lots of scraps left from Jennifer. Some will go on the back and some will show up in other blocks. It was loads of fun and miracle of miracle the triangle blocks matched up in the upper corners without any fuss.
Back to curves....cut a bunch of 8 1/2 inch squares for some purpose which is now forgotten. They look like a sea of kelp to me. Hmmm...don't know where this is going.
Some more simple play--Double Cross. I had a stack of fabrics I liked together and wanted to make something simple. Of course if I wanted them to look like crosses then I had to mark the top and sides with pins. (this was discovered after one block looked like drunken crosses. The blocks will be tipsy, but I can't decide between solid gray or light green. Any suggestions???

perfect = panick // play = productive!

I really want to follow a pattern from a magazine to make a cushion for my fiance for Xmas. The problem is it includes some 'friendship stars', and I've only successfully done half square triangles once, 15 yrs ago, when I was 15! Fear of Failure has meant that after a month of repeatidly looking at the instructions, I still haven't got anywhere.

So I decided I'd put the lessons from 15 Minutes Play into practice, and PLAY at making a friendship star block. Just some leftover scraps of fabric, 15 minutes and the knowledge that it was not for the cushion.

Ok, my points don't really match up with the centre square, and it is very wonkey, but I like it and I think I know what I need to do to make the ones for the cushion meet up better (uniform seam allowance i think!). Humm, maybe it's the first block in a new scrappy quilt?

30-Day challenge, days 4-6

humming right along...
Day 4: Light blue.  New technique: slashing.  I also tried adding some "larger" sized scraps.

Day 5: White.  New technique: I made two blocks and put them face to face, drew a line and stitched on either side of it, then cut it apart (the same way as if you were making HSTs).  Not so sure how I feel about it, but I thought I'd let it go and see where the challenge takes me.  I also felt more comfortable about using larger scraps.  So comfortable that i even threw in some of my favorite scraps (meaning this will have to turn into something of value some day..)

Day 6: Purple.  New technique:  more slashing, and I actually set a TIMER for 15 minutes.  Haha, when it went off I was no where near done playing, but I let myself stitch for 10 additional minutes and then stopped. 

I took everything else off the design wall and this is how the challenge blocks look so far..

Challenge accepted~

V's 30 day challenge seems like just the thing I need to warm myself up before trying any more crumb log cabins.. so I've been spending 15 minutes (or so) each night..

Day 1: Green.  New technique--  wavy seam.  (up the center, it's just slightly wavy, but can you see it?)

Day 2: Pink.  New technique-- umm.. i was going to slash it, but i liked it at this point, so i stopped.

Day 3: Red.  New technique-- slashing and adding a strip. 

With nice piles of scraps arranged by color it's easy to just grab a bin and make one block before bedtime.  I want to sort out my other scraps stashed away though, because I know I have more fabric to play with..

15 minutes and then some...

I'm so happy to share my playing with ya'll.   For me, 15 minutes turns into 30 turns into 45...but who's counting when you're having fun!  Meet my cat, Kramer, he loves to sit with me when I'm sewing.  I start pulling scraps and sewing them together:

 It's amazing how clean it looks when it's cut and squared up.  My squares are 9 1/2 inches.

I'm a little hesitant to slice this great looking square!   But I do, and added a few black & white strips.

 I'm up to 4...gotta go play some more!

Thanks for letting me share!   Happy Sewing!.....Eileen

you pushed me

creatively, of course.  I got all excited about the 2nd Bee coming up and thought I better get back to playing so I have a decent project idea by the time my month rolls around.  lately I've been trying out monochrome blocks to force myself to think more about color and value, contrast and lack of contrast.. it's been fun.  things don't always turn out the way I thought they would.
anyway, here's what I came up with today.

 A log cabin-ish block made by "making" strips of color.  Felt good to dig through those tiny tiny scraps and find the right one.

I'm having fun just touching the scraps!

This is so worth it......look at all the goodies here....and head over to my blog to see the orphan blocks and other goodies Lisa sent me in the scrap exchange......

And here's a few little extras she threw in. I love it all....I'm going to have fun with these......thanks so much!

More blocks!

 

Few more blocks from the scrap bin. What is it about the scraps that we can't throw them away? 

How small is too small?

While I was cleaning away I found plenty of bits and pieces and decided to keep piecing them into blocks 15 minutes at a time. 

I wonder how big of the block would be we I time myself? 

I am going to try that today.

Welcome Gnome

Last month Andrea Zuill, aka BadBird posted an embroidery competiton on her blog: zuill.us/andreablog. The only rule was to use one of her free patterns.

Delighted with the excuse to do some hand embroidery, I quickly whipped up her Gnome pattern, adding my own text. I'd just packed my fiance off to deepest darkest rural Romania for two weeks, so "Welcome Gnome" seemed quite appropriate!

But I knew I wanted to 'do more' to it, so I grabbed my hexagon project scraps and pieced the borders. They mostly remind me of a loved one or a loved place, so add to the sentiment for me. They weren't all 2" square, so I was amazed that the corners (almost) met perfectly! Then with the full on PLAY spirit of 15 Minutes, I began to machine quilt it. This is not a skill I have mastered yet. I'm OK when it doesnt matter where the lines go, but, well, promise me you won't look too closely! To complete it, a kind friend donated the binding; a pair of old trousers!

So although I intended to enter it in an embroidery competition, I approached the quilt bit with the idea to Play. It didnt matter if it went 'wrong', because there was no pre-defined 'right'. It was good to practice some techniques and most importantly, I had fun!

process

These are the Raw materials....
that live in one of these toy boxes.

When I'm ready to play I pull a basket out.

Which one will I play with today???

I dump it out.

Make a mess.

Trim it sort of square.

Then I do a puzzle.

Play time......

the best time of the day.

Hello~

I'm Jessica, I'm new here~
I've been following this blog for a while and I've been completely amazed by the ways you all work with fabric.  You've inspired me to play with almost every idea that pops into my head..

I started out with a Bulls Eye block, and ended up with this (on the left):

And the strip on the right is what I came up with just foundation piecing strips/strings to a strip of thin fabric. Both strips will go into the NYC Metro Mod Guild's strip project at tomorrow's meeting.  Originally I wanted to make an entire bulls eye quilt, but after trying out this strip I think my curiosity has been satisfied and now I can move on to other projects.  The string pieced strip though.. that was fun.  I can see a whole quilt of these..

blocks for Victoria

Two blocks for Victoria.

Phone book pages.

Scraps.

Rotary cutter.

Viola!!

I know she will do her magic

with the hodge podge of blocks

she'll receive!!!

Can't WAIT!